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If Your Game Has Crafting, You Need This

Pathfinder's crafting rules can be more than a little frustrating. One expensive item can take years to make! So what's an adventurer to do? Making Craft Work provides a strong alternative with short, sensible rules, that actually function in the context of the game.

Crafting times are now based on the complexity of the item, rather than its value. The rules are also meant to be flexible, able to be tweaked and adapted to suit the needs of the game. Making Craft Work provides a more solid foundation upon which any other house rules for crafting can be made. I would highly recommend Making Craft Work to anyone, and of course especially to those who anticipate that crafting will come up in their game.

A final note: a version of these rules are available on the d20PFSRD, however there are several discrepancies between those and the rules here. EDIT: Spes Magna has verified that this document is the most up to date version of the rules available.

More straightforward and more useful than RAW

While it's not a perfect analog to reality, it's a much closer and more useful approximation than the core rules. It's less complicated, the time frames are more realistic, and it actually makes crafting viable as a character choice. I will incorporate this in all my games.

Not perfect, but WAY better

Not a perfect crafting system, but much better than the default one. Crafting becomes a viable option for more complex items, and how the time is figured makes much more sense with this. Glad I purchased it!

Nice try

I bought this based on the reviews, and I'm glad it was only a dollar. I appreciate the effort here and I will be able to take a bit or two out to modify the DC of somethings that have bugged me in the core rules system. If I had to guess I'd say the author has no experience with actually making tools, or jewelry. That said they obviously have lots of experience with games. I like realism in my games, which is why I don't play MMO's either. you don't craft things by wringing your hands in the air. You go to a workshop and you put in the blood sweat tears and most important, Time. the GP cost of an item reflects the time needed to make it as well. this is real. next time the mechanic charges you labor for fixing your car, you'll see what I mean. taking that factor out breaks the system.

the examples:
Gold is harder to smelt than silver, impurities in gold show up far more quickly than in silver. this is one reason why gold is more valuable. (example one thus isn't broken). Plate armor would take Six months to make in the real world. try it. (example two, not broken) making a box is easier than making a crowbar. try it. (example three, not broken).

This is how craft should have worked from the beginning

This super cheap pdf fixes one of my biggest gripes with the Pathfinder skill system. The craft skill as written in the Core rules are clunky, arbitrary and frankly makes no sense at all. This short pdf fixes all that. It contains a simple and elegant system which fixes most of the problems with the old crafting system. I recommend this pdf to anyone who wants the craft skill to make sense in their own Campaigns.

+1 to the review. I am definitely replacing the core craft making rules with this new rule set in all of my campaigns. I have some players who want to do more crafting but some of the absurdly long craft times make it impractical.

The time may not be realistic, but the cost still keeps the relative worth of items balanced. If players do begin abusing the craft rules, I think the easier tweak is to up the component cost.

One question: If I fail the crafting check but don't waste any materials, do I get a bonus to my next check since presumably some of the work is already done? (It seems counter-intuitive to me that I could spend a week working on a suit of armor and still have the same chance at finishing it the second week as the first, even though I've been working on it for a week and haven't wasted any of my initial materials.)

Also, it strikes me that if I fail the DC by 10 or more I should ruin more of my initial materials, even if I'm not using Alchemy...

I'm going to be using this system in all of my games going forward, just wondered about the price of failure...

One question: If I fail the crafting check but don't waste any materials, do I get a bonus to my next check since presumably some of the work is already done?

Hmm. Interesting question. I'd not thought of that. I can see the answer going either way. If a player asked, I'd be inclined to allow a +2 bonus for the second attempt. I'm a firm believer that +2/-2 circumstance modifiers are great ways to facilitate player insight and creativity.

As far as failing by 10 or more having additional consequences outside Craft (alchemy), that's not unreasonable. I didn't even consider it. I guess I just like it when things explode. :)

Well where do I begin. The system is still a legacy hold over from 3.X should I say more? Just kidding. The only change was that there was no longer an XP lost for creating an item.

The first problem: Time

This is similar to crafting regular items. The problem is that no matter what a caster or artificer can never make more than 1,000 gp worth of items in one day. They also basically say that an magical artisan (crafter) can not work more than 8 hours at a time on a magical item but does not take in the fact that some artisans might be able to endure more than others.

Second Problem: Ignores the power of the artisan
It makes no room for the skill, his stats or character level of the artisan character.

Third Problem: Not flexible and costly
Spell are the primary component in creating the item which is problem because players often get locked into the idea that they are locked into using only those effects. Now they do say that the spell are only a guide line and that it is up for interpretation, mainly by the GM.

What if I just wanted to create a magical cigarette lighter that I could always use unlimited? This item would not be super powerful and is mostly for flavor but you can start fires of course with it. The only way to do this is to make it have unlimited charges of prestidigitation which by RAW would make a light be around (500 something gold) that is a really expensive lighter.

Last Problem: Personal Cost

Magic Item creation has always been a problem area in D&D since 1st edition. Back in 1st and 2nd edition you were required to give up a point of Constitution, permanently. That was real harsh.

In 3.X you had to give up permanently your experience points which also didn't make sense and caused all sorts of problems with their system.

In Pathfinder, there is no personal cost which means that a level 5 Artificer could easily set up shop and make items forever and never need to go on adventures. BTW the ToS artificer, stay away from that train wreck, he is OP in my opinion, good flavor though.

This last problem has always been on my mind as of late as I have always been interested in the character who makes the magic items. I do believe that their should be a personal cost and so far my idea is centered around the temporary loss of ability scores, primarily at least two of the physical ones: Strength and Constitution. I could see this solving the whole time problem because this would allow you to push yourself to your limits but you have to rest in a major way afterwards or have magic help restore your ability loss which can cost the group.

These are just some of the problems that I have had with magic item creation that I can remember at this time.

In 3.x there was a web enhancement for PHB II that provided some methods of getting around the XP problem by allowing other characters to donate XP specifically for the purpose of item creation. We adopted that early on, so that a PC could always pay the GP and XP cost for creating any items he wanted made, and also donate a portion of the cost for any items created for the benefit of the party as a whole, such as healing wands.

Pathfinder did make one small change beyond dropping the XP cost: scrolls of less than 250gp (I think?) value now only require 2 hours to scribe. Inexplicably, you're still only allowed to make one/day.

Food for thought about magic items. Thanks. I'm not sure if I'd tackle an alternate system. That'll require some thought and planning. I am, however, working an alternate system for metamagic feats. :)

Food for thought about magic items. Thanks. I'm not sure if I'd tackle an alternate system. That'll require some thought and planning. I am, however, working an alternate system for metamagic feats. :)

Picked this one up today, and other than a few changes I think that I will sooner use this than the simple rule that I was using in my game before (not to do the SP to GP conversion, just work in GP). While this is more complex as a separate rule, I think it is easier to deal with than the normal crafting rules.

Picked up the Action Point one too, since I am putting those back into home game. Thanks for nice products, hope you like the couple of quarters I dropped your way.

My group loves these new rules, though, inexplicably, three out of four of the players who have Craft have Craft Alchemy (with two of them being poison makers). We figured that the DC for the poison determined the amount of time it took to make the poison.

Just one change that I'm making for it: Fullplate (and similar armors) are in the very complex category, taking a minimum of two weeks to make. Why? Fullplate is tailormade for the person, requiring measuring, balancing, and adjusting.

Sect: Glad the rules are working for you. And, I agree with your rational for the full plate change. One of the things I wanted to accomplish was a simple set of rules that could be easily tweaked to account for the DM preferences and insights.

<Resurrect>
I just picked this up to add to my houserules list for my campaign (under development). Not sure when I will run it with my gaming group, as it still has a long ways to go.

My question is if you had thought anymore about a similar system for the magic item crafting. I was looking at Ito's comments above and was turning the notion over in my mind. The last two campaigns I've played in has seen the craft rules butchered and in the current one, one of the players is playing the ToS Artificer and milking it for everything it is worth. First I am outlawing the class in my campaign, but on the other hand, I'd like the magic item creation rules to make a bit more sense too.

One thing to maybe consider is requiring a roll/week for each +1 bonus of an item.
Say my character wanted to craft a +4 Strength bonus composite longbow. It would take him 5 weeks to build it (one week for the base +0 strength bow plus one week for each additional +1 strength bonus).
Thereby using your Full Plate (+9 armor bonus) analogy it would take an armorer 9 weeks to build (as opposed to just your one). Quite a long time I know but far shorter than if you had used the original craft rules. Unfortunately this would only work for items that grant a tangible bonus. for other items I believe your rules would work just fine.
Just my 2 coppers worth.

Gold is harder to smelt than silver, impurities in gold show up far more quickly than in silver. this is one reason why gold is more valuable. (example one thus isn't broken). Plate armor would take Six months to make in the real world. try it. (example two, not broken) making a box is easier than making a crowbar. try it. (example three, not broken)

Example one doesn't say a thing about smelting, but is rather about casting via a mold. Regarding example 2, I never said that the system was realistic. In fact, I said the exact opposite, and that this was a feature, not a bug. With example 3, it's not a box versus a crowbar. It's a DC 15 "high-quality box" versus a DC 10 crowbar, with the more complicated item getting done first. That an item with the higher DC gets finished faster than the item with the lower DC -- with all else being equal -- makes no sense.

I understand your expectations didn't match my final product. That happens. No one can be all things to all people.

But it did seem fair to note that three out of three of your counterpoints do not actually address what I wrote.

I'm looking at addressing size by shifting the complexity by 1 for each size difference -1. Thus a human can make a small longword just like a medium one, but a tiny longsword is more difficult. Likewise if the item is very big or small the shift is size difference -2. This covers issues like big ships in a more systematic way. Building something big for big folks gets both shifts.
The complexity chart then extends by x2 time, +2 DC for each additional complexity level.
I'm considering masterwork and special materials should also be shifts for consistency.
One missing modifier is the use of a workshop to assist in crafting i.e. beyond using masterwork tools. I'm considering ln(workshop cost) -3 bonus. (Yes that's a natural log function) or you could just approximate with a table.

Cheapy: I'm generally for whatever works with the least amount of work. I'd probably be in favor of just using the poison's DC, perhaps adding complexity to it if a player wanted to modify the baseline poison.

But I'm not sure.

I have considered digging out and updating the rules I wrote for poison crafting for Fantasy Flight Games's Traps & Treachery, but I've not gotten much writing done at all since my heart attack. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things soon, but I have a couple of projects to finish before I even start to think about revisiting Making Craft Work.

I picked this up since I noticed it takes over a year to make myself an adamantine scimitar, and the rules don't allow for my plan of 'let me make you guys some mithral chain shirts as back-up armor'. I'm going to have to throw together a list of DC modifiers for new alternate materials at some point! With the Tech Guide adding skymetals, and Ultimate Equipment adding a bunch more, plus primitive materials. I'll have to take a look at how these rules interact with the Alchemist; fortunately, I believe UE has a list of DCs for the alchemical equipment in there, so the complexity list is only needed for crafting times, and that's before the alchemist gets their nifty crafting abilities.

Gold is harder to smelt than silver, impurities in gold show up far more quickly than in silver. this is one reason why gold is more valuable. (example one thus isn't broken). Plate armor would take Six months to make in the real world. try it. (example two, not broken) making a box is easier than making a crowbar. try it. (example three, not broken)

Example one doesn't say a thing about smelting, but is rather about casting via a mold. Regarding example 2, I never said that the system was realistic. In fact, I said the exact opposite, and that this was a feature, not a bug. With example 3, it's not a box versus a crowbar. It's a DC 15 "high-quality box" versus a DC 10 crowbar, with the more complicated item getting done first. That an item with the higher DC gets finished faster than the item with the lower DC -- with all else being equal -- makes no sense.

In point of fact, though, his criticisms are wrong fundamentally anyway. Setting aside the bit about gold and silver (I don't know enough about working with them to comment), it might take you 6 months to make plate mail if you were inexperienced (in which case the time would be more in failed attempts) or you didn't have much time to work on it each week. If you put in 8 hour days every day (assuming you had the requisite experience) you could finish your armor in a fraction of the time.

And making a crowbar is criminally simple. I'd argue that it is FAR more difficult to make a decent box than a crowbar (seriously, take bar stock, heat and bend one end, heat and flatten the points, grind, heat the ends again, quench, done...and that's assuming you don't want to cut corners)

Anyway, as a fan of crafty characters, I love this product. Thanks for making it!

Hello Spes Magna! I firstly want to thank you for developing Making Craft Work; when I wanted to make a skilled craftsman character, I was astonished by how dysfunctional the core Craft rules are, and so I happily bought your PDF and shared it with my GM.

I've noticed your crafting rules also appear in the PFSRD, although there are discrepancies between them and your document, most notably the base crafting times in the item complexity table.

Trying to make sense of this discrepancy, it appears that these are two different stages in the development of the rules. Which would be the most up to date, or do I misunderstand the nature of the discrepancy? I'd greatly appreciate your comment on the matter.